Reconsidering nature and accountability: the possibilities of strategic postmodernism

This work draws on strategic postmodern theory in a reflexive discourse analysis of environmental accountability. Nature and accountability are 'foundational' concepts upon which environmental accounting has been built and in this work I show how these can be, and are, contested. If environmental accounting is to comment seriously on environmental concerns, these theoretical underpinnings must be explicitly (re)explored. This requires us to have a more comprehensive understanding of both what the project is about (nature) and what it is trying to achieve (environmental accountability and ultimately abating the ongoing destruction of the environment). In light of this, notions of nature and accountability are extensively re-examined to expose their multiplicity and to open up the assumptions that have surrounded these representational categories. This stages a return to these 'core' concepts to show how they are, and can be re-negotiated in order to develop less exploitative relationships with the non-human world. This thesis considers these concepts and contextualises its developments in relation to global negotiations over the issue of climate change. Discourses of climate change are explored, as is the Kyoto Protocol and Australian responses to global warming.